Other forms: blinking, blinks, blinked
To blink is to shut and open your eyes in an instant — the thing you do fifteen times a minute without deciding to. You blink when dust gets in, blink hard to stay awake in a long meeting, blink at the camera flash.
Lights blink as well: a cursor blinking on a screen, the router's green light blinking, hazard lights blinking on a dark road. The noun gives English one of its commonest measures of speed, 'in the blink of an eye', while 'on the blink' means a machine has stopped working properly. Figuratively, to blink is to flinch — 'he did not blink at the price', 'neither side blinked'. Keep it apart from wink: a wink is one eye and means something, a blink is both eyes and means nothing. And blinkers in Britain are the flashing indicator lights on a car, as well as the leather flaps that stop a horse seeing sideways.
1verbblinkTo close and open your eyes quickly.
“She blinked as she stepped out into the sunlight.”
2verbflashOf a light: to flash on and off.
“A red light was blinking on the answering machine.”
3verbshowTo show surprise or to back down under pressure.
“He read the figure out loud and did not blink.”
4nounclosingOne quick closing and opening of the eyes.
“The whole thing was over in a blink.”
Blink belongs to a family of shining rather than of eyelids. Old English blincan came from Proto-Germanic *blinkaną, a variant of *blīkaną, 'to gleam, shine'; German blinken still means 'to flash' and Danish blinke means 'to twinkle'. Blank and bleak are cousins of it.
Proto-Germanic
*blinkaną
Old English
*blincan
Middle English
blynken
English, today
blink
Built from
From Middle English blynken, blenken, from Old English blincan (suggested by causative verb blenċan (“to deceive”); > English blench), from Proto-Germanic blinkaną, a variant of blīkaną (“to gleam, shine”). Cognate with Dutch blinken (“to glitter, shine”), German blinken (“to flash, blink”), Danish blinke (“to flash, twinkle, wink, blink”), Swedish blinka (“to flash, blink, twinkle, wink, blink”). Related to blank, blick, blike, bleak.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA